Day Two: Park Hopper, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom

This is the Wizard's Hat that symbolizes the Hollywood Studios theme park. If you didn't know (like me before the trip), there are four Disney parks in Disney World. They are all really far apart, unlike the two Universal Parks or the two Tokyo Disney Parks. Magic Kingdom is very much like Disneyland elsewhere except here they have more restaurants, shops and different shows. The fireworks spectacular Wishes though a major attraction as is a winter castle light up show. But since all the major rides are the same as the ones in Tokyo, this park was not on our agenda since we were only doing the Disney Parks in ... one day. What? One day to do Disney parks on a week long vacation???

We are not huge Disney fans and the kids are only really into the thrill rides and there just aren't that many of them. I snuck in a few shows but one day was enough.

This is the Tower of Terror, the same ride as Disney Sea, but the theming is Twilight Zone versus... Haunted Hotel... I think the storyline of the one in Tokyo better. It is an awesome ride though.
Don't have any pictures of the Aerosmith roller coaster but the family loved it. Hiro was pumped!

Gotta explain about Rio's odd pose. He did this on Tower of Terror and thought it was a riot and decided it would be his theme... A couple of days and a zillion photos later, Hiro and I begged him to stop which he finally did and when he was his own animated self, he looked back at these ones and said, "That was so immature!" Got to love preteens.

Star Wars ride... not great if you are not a Star Wars fan... but it's the new version, not like vomit ride like the old Star Tour. The Indiana Jones show is great. A must do.

This is Animal Kingdom, the second theme park we went to. Surprisingly, the clan did not enjoy Expedition Everest, the biggest roller coaster of any Disney Park. I loved the Yeti theming! Since we mostly do roller coasters and they have great singles lines, we could have done it again but no takers. Animal Kingdom has wild animal safaris and bird shows (Reina detests birds) but my kids had little interest. They didn't like the... smell. Whatever. Without reserved tickets, it would have been too late to see the Nemo show so we did Lion King Festi. I liked the singing but the other stuff ... meh.

Indiana Jones Stunt Show was awesome. It was a great place to rest because you can sit in the stadium before the show instead of lining up.

Photos got out of order again. But this is the Tusker House restaurant which serves an exotic buffet. Cous cous and African chicken, samosa and Malaysian curry. They had roast sirloin and chicken with gravy for those with simpler palates.  Fabulous food. Originally, I booked it thinking it would give us reserved tickets to the Finding Nemo show but apparently my Internet research was old news. A few weeks back, they stopped show reservations and made it a Character Dining.... My kids are so not into Disney characters... it was almost painful to watch them diss the dolls.

Reina's much more conservative plate. One thing on this trip that we didn't do was eat that well. To save time, we usually ate breakfast in our hotel room instead of wasting time fighting the breakfast crowd. In addition, we were usually too sleepy or tired to eat much dinner. This was actually our most expensive and elaborate meal of the entire meal.

My original plan was to really do the Park Hopper and head to Epcot Center to do the Test Track coaster ride and see the fabulous Illumination show, but the clan wanted to go back to Hollywood Studios again. So we got to see the Osborne Dancing Lights which was okay. Some people freak out over it. We enjoyed the walk through it but spent less than five minutes here. We had Fast Passes to the Toy Story Carnival Ride which is THE most popular attraction here. At noon, we got a 6:30 pm time slot which I thought we would forgo for Epcot but since we were back, we went. OMG, we loved it. Oh, next time THIS will be the ride we go first thing in the morning before the crowds and FAST PASS for. It's the ultimate shooting game. You can't go back to Buzz Lightyear or Men in Black after doing this ride.

A real life toy soldier from Toy Story. He gave us directions to the bathroom without saying a word. Awesome dude!

It was a fun-filled day. The biggest disappointment was how tired we got at around 7pm... It happens when you've been flying for 20 hours, then walk around two theme parks. In theory, we would still had time to do Epcot but we were so pooped. I just couldn't imagine myself staying awake until IllumiNation which begins at 9 pm, then fight the crowds to bus back to the hotel after 10pm. We were back in our comfy room at 7:30pm. The other thing I wanted to do was to see the Bob Jackson piano comedy show at the lounge in the hotel. It was 5 mins away and FREE but still I could not get out of bed to even take a peek... The kids enjoyed Mr. Young on the Disney Channel like they watched TWO episodes...  There are so much other Disney resorts I want to try. I felt we "wasted" our stay at the Riverside because we missed so much here. The solution maybe to book ourselves at the Port Orleans French Quarters next door... We will be back!!